The problem with trees, famously, is that they’re very difficult to hit golf balls through. No one knows this better than Donald Trump, a passionate golfer and current president of the United States.
For the duration of his second term, Trump has made sweeping overhauls to the aesthetics of Washington D.C., remaking the nation’s capital in his own signature glitzy, maximalist style. He’s torn down the East Wing of the White House, gilded bronze statues in gold, and now, he’s coming for the trees.
Specifically, the Trump administration has been clear-cutting a vast swath of public trees on the East Potomac Golf Links, a historic public golf course in D.C. This weekend, the National Parks Service — at Trump’s behest — cut down more than 500 trees and seemed set to chop down even more, until a federal judge stepped in and literally shouted Trump’s lawyers down.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes forced the Trump administration to halt all tree removal until at least 7 a.m. on Tuesday. The Trump administration had described the massive clear-cutting effort as “routine maintenance,” an excuse that, in the middle of court on Monday morning, basically made Reyes blow her top.
The dispute stemmed from a very clear set of circumstances. Due to the conflict between the Trump administration’s plans to renovate East Potomac and what preservation groups wanted (namely, not cutting down hundreds of trees), Reyes had ordered the Trump administration to notify her before beginning any major work on the project, including the removal of trees. The Trump administration, well, didn’t do that, setting off a chain of courtroom events that witnesses described as something they’d never seen before.
The plaintiffs in this case — two golfers and the D.C. Preservation League — went to Reyes on Sunday night seeking an emergency halt to the work, which they said was proceeding at lighting pace with little notice. Trump’s lawyers admitted that the work had been done “faster than anticipated,” cutting down their entire list of trees to be felled and searching for more before Sunday night’s rain shut down the job.
Threads on social media from inside the courtroom paint a wild picture of the scene.
It’s clear that what made Reyes so singularly mad is that she feels the government — Trump’s lawyers, essentially — betrayed her trust and tried to get one over on her.
On Friday, the National Mall and Memorial Parks Superintendent Kevin Griess swore in court that crews would begin by removing 169 trees on Saturday, according to The Washington Post. There were 90 more on the list for removal, and “field inspections” would eventually put 529 trees on the chopping block. But instead of this kind of gradual process, the plaintiffs claim that all 529 trees were chopped over the weekend, a detail that the Park Service only coughed up in a separate document on Sunday, essentially saying “oops!”
“I was hearing from everybody on the plaintiff’s side that this was going to happen,” Reyes said. “I said repeatedly, ‘No, I trust the government.’ I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done.”
Her conclusion, then, was that the government was doing all of this on purpose.
“I am just at a total loss to understand what has happened here, other than — Occam’s razor time — that the government precisely intended to do precisely what it has done, which is intentionally delay letting the plaintiffs and the court know what is happening so they can put a plan in place to clear hundreds and hundreds of trees.”
The details make it even more suspect. According to courtroom reports, Griess testified that the work at the golf course is being done by 20-40 personnel who were re-assigned from other beautification projects to the golf course last week, funded by a “surge workforce” fund for Trump’s beautification efforts, which include tree removal. It’s classic Trump: make actual plans filled like swiss cheese with legal loopholes and then just sort of do whatever you want and hope that no one catches you. In the case of literally felling trees, even if you do get your wrist slapped, the work has already been done. The trees are felled.
“I don’t know how I could’ve made it clearer!” Reyes exclaimed at one point. “What has happened has cost the government all of its credibility!” She added that she was “beyond being upset and furious right now” and that she was “just disappointed with the government.”
Reyes made it clear that she expects her current order to stop work until 7 a.m. on Tuesday to be respected. “If that order is violated by two seconds, there are going to be contempt proceedings.”
The East Potomac course has been a pet project for Trump for months. In June, he made his plans to revamp the course public, claiming hyperbolically that the current state of the park was “dilapidated” and “very dangerous.”
“I just returned from a tour of various Statues, Monuments, Fountains and, most importantly, an old and run down Golf Course located throughout Washington, D.C., our Nation’s Capital,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in late June. “Most importantly on today’s visit, however, was the Secretary of the Interior, and his people, together with me and my staff, studying the dilapidated, worn out, and very dangerous and outdated Golf Course known as East Potomac Golf Links.”
Otherwise, the administration has largely kept mum about the whole thing.
“NPS recognizes the importance of trees to the park and its visitors,” the Interior Department said in a statement to The Washington Post. “This carefully planned work is part of our required stewardship of the park.”
The key word there is “required.” Required by whom? Certainly not the people of D.C. Like so many other actions this administration has taken, there’s only one boss calling the shots. Everyone else is just a caddy.
